Lesson Four: Read, Read, Read

Out there on the worlds shelves are lines and lines of poetry and over time a few of those lines have lept into your life, onto your shelves and into your heart. They spoke to you at a time in your life when you needed to listen, to better understand what you were feeling but didn't know how,,,and then found a path through poetry.

And found a path through poetry.

I am diving back into my passion for poetry, started as a young child, and I'm reminded that the work for writing is in the reading. And I have stacks and stacks of books in front of me to get to. And I fear as much as I yearn to go through the transformation.

For those interested in putting their toe in the pools of poetry waters, here's a taste of David Whyte, one of my favorites. Links to a great interview with David as well as to his website are at the bottom of this post. Write on!

The House of Belonging by David Whyte

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my darkened heart
and
I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light.

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

The is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

Interview with David Whyte
David's Website